


Winter Hunt (WAdvent Day #12)

by gardnerhill



Category: Mой нежно любимый детектив | My Dearly Beloved Detective (1986), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Chocolate, Christmas, Gen, Treasure Hunting, Watson's Woes WAdvent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28035441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: Games and gifts are part of Christmas.
Relationships: Shirley Holmes & Jane Watson (My Dearly Beloved Detective)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Winter Hunt (WAdvent Day #12)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the December 2020 Watson's Woes. Day 12.

Shirley Holmes emulates our great fictional detective in many ways – even when she gives a gift.

I have a weakness for Cadbury chocolates. My partner knows this, and therefore we both know she will give me a pound of the sweets on Christmas Eve.

Ordinary people simply hand over a box of candy to friends. Not so my detective.

On the morning of December 24 I receive a card with a message that is a clue to where the first candy is hidden. When I locate the treat, it is wrapped in paper that contains the clue for where the next one is tucked away, and so forth.

The game has expanded every year. Originally the candies were all in the same room. Gradually they moved out to all our rooms, then the building, and now they are scattered throughout the entire city block where our office resides (forcing me out and down the street, knocking on doors and reciting riddles to our bemused neighbours or Detective Lester and his men).

One year Mrs. Penrose met me at the door with her teary-eyed daughter Millie, handed me a chocolate-stained paper clue, and made the young girl confess to having eaten my hidden chocolate, for which she'd gotten a whipping. I convinced the woman to let the 8-year-old accompany me on the hunt ("so I can give her a scolding myself"); instead, I showed Millie how to read the note to track the next confection down, and before the morning was over she was solving the riddles as quickly as I, and in some cases even faster (if she beat me to the solution she was permitted to eat those chocolates; "We needn't tell your mother, either!"). Millie Penrose enjoyed the game so much that she accompanied me every year since, sharpening her own wits against those of Shirley Holmes and fighting Jane Watson for every Cadbury.

"We'll be able to hire her when she's grown," I told Shirley, toasting my chilly toes at our hearth one Christmas afternoon. "She's smart as a whip. Make the riddles harder next year – much harder."

Shirley shook her head fondly. "Dear Watson. You may have lost a few chocolates, but you gained an apprentice."


End file.
